Childhood and slavery In 1815, Henry Brown was born into slavery on a plantation called Hermitage in
Louisa County, Virginia. Henry was religious from an early age, stating that his mother was the one to instill Christian values into him. He is believed to have had at least two siblings, because he mentioned a brother and a sister in his autobiography. At age 15 he was sent to work in a tobacco factory in Richmond. In his autobiography,
Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, Brown describes his owner: "Our master was uncommonly kind, (for even a slaveholder may be kind) and as he moved about in his dignity he seemed like a god to us, but not with standing his kindness although he knew very well what superstitious notions we formed of him, he never made the least attempt to correct our erroneous impression, but rather seemed pleased with the reverential feelings which we entertained towards him."
Escape Brown was hired out by his master in
Richmond, Virginia, and worked in a tobacco factory. In the twelve years that followed, he married a female slave named Nancy and rented a house in which he lived with his wife and their three children. Brown had been paying his wife's master to not sell his family, but the latter betrayed Brown by selling Nancy, who was pregnant at the time, and their three children to a different slave owner, a minister in North Carolina. In 1849, with the help of James C. A. Smith, a free black man, They separated in 1851. (
The Liberator, May 3, 1850) Douglass wished that Brown had not revealed the details of his escape, so that others might have used it. When Samuel Smith attempted to free other slaves in Richmond in 1849, they were arrested. The year of his escape, Brown was contacted by his wife's new owner, who offered to sell his family to him. Brown declined the offer. This was an embarrassment within the abolitionist community, which tried to keep the information private. Brown is known for speaking out against slavery and expressing his feelings about the state of America. In his
Narrative, he offers a cure for slavery, suggesting that slaves should be given the vote, a new president should be elected, and the North should speak out against the "spoiled child" of the South. After passage of the
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required cooperation from law enforcement officials to capture refugee slaves even in free states, Brown moved to England for safety, as he had become a known public figure. He toured Britain with his antislavery panorama for the next ten years, performing several hundred times a year. To earn a living, Brown also entered the British show circuit for 25 years, until 1875, after leaving the abolitionist circuit following the start of the
American Civil War. In 1857, as Cutter documented in her book,
The Illustrated Slave (2017), Brown acted in several plays written expressly for him by a British playwright – E.G. Burton – but his acting career appears to have been short-lived. In the 1860s, he began performing as a
magician with acts as a
mesmerist and
conjuror, under the show names of "Prof. H. Box Brown" and the "African Prince". While in England in 1855, Brown married Jane Floyd, a White Cornish tin worker's daughter, and began a new family. In 1875, he returned with his new family to the U.S., with a group magic act. A later report documented the Brown Family Jubilee Singers.
Last years, possible return to England, and death Brown returned to the US in 1875, and ultimately settled in Canada in the Toronto area, where he lived and worked for over a decade. Tax and housing records indicate that he still may have been performing in the last years of his life. As the scholar Martha J. Cutter first documented in 2015, Henry Box Brown died in Toronto on June 15, 1897. The last known performance by Brown is a newspaper account of a performance with his daughter Annie and wife Jane in
Brantford, Ontario, Canada, dated February 26, 1889. Martha Cutter also recently (2022) found two possible performances by Box Brown in England in 1896, one of which was at the Varteg School in England:; The Varteg Board School was close to overflowing on Thursday evening week, when one of the grandest of entertainments was given on behalf of Mr. George Selby. [. . .] The programme was as follows:—Pianoforte solo, Miss Jessie Pope; duet, Misses Esse Short and A. Brace; dialogue, “Mrs. Pert and her visitors,” by Nine friends; organ recital, Professor Box Brown; [. . .] The organ recital by Prof. Box Brown has left a marked impression on the minds and ears of the people. This information is not definitive, however, because passenger records in this period of ships returning to Canada contain few specific details about their occupants beyond first and last name and gender. If the performance by Brown at the Varteg school is valid, this would have been the last known performance by Brown, since he died just one year later. ==Legacy==